I just read a 538 article yesterday on this same topic. Not getting my hopes up though...

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...ntons-in-2016/

Those more in the know, is there a chance the Supreme court repeals the ACA?

I'm going to bet that Justice Roberts doesn't let that happen.

A repeal of the ACA would only help Biden in November and then they'll pass something stronger with a public option next year. Roberts probably knows that and votes with the liberals again.

I'd also say that Roberts likely wouldn't buy the Administration's argument (which is a bit lame)

Trump Can’t Name One Thing He’d Prioritize if Re-Elected https://t.co/ZKSf82ZNfR pic.twitter.com/kGBPvzNGuD

— Peter Wade ��‍♂️ (@brooklynmutt) June 26, 2020

Experience is a great word, a beautiful word. The letter E appears four times. No other word has four E's.

The fact that he's publicly trying to cut health coverage during a pandemic with 125,000 dead and rising toward 150-170k by Election Day makes me wonder if Trump even wants to win.

It really is like asking a 5 year old a question he can't answer because some of the words in the question have more than 2 syllables. So from that I gather his main priority is to not let anyone drop bombs on people, awesome.

I really don't get the mentality of people who still think this is a dem hoax. I have a lot of right leaning people I know. Almost all of them are taking it seriously. They will defend Trumps response to the death and absolve him of any wrongdoing, but they take the virus itself seriously.

I just can't grasp how especially stupid or warped you must be to still be on the hoax train.

At worst, if the experts are 100% wrong about the effectiveness of standing 6 feet from people and wearing a mask, there is no harm in having done so. What it could possibly prevent, OTOH, seems to far outweigh any inconvenience.

Having slowly gotten back to driving again and realizing the number of a-holes on the road, I have to imagine the Venn Diagram of people who insist on driving slowly in the left lane and people who refuse to wear their mask because hoax/overblown/flu/God/don't tell me what to do, consists of just one giant circle.

Not sure about the hoax part, but my father feels the media coverage being so one sided with regards to COVID is their attempt to get Trump out of office. With regards to COVID he has been taking it seriously, wearing a mask, etc. This is after he was bitching about having to wear a mask.

Yesterday, with the COVID news exploding again, there was not a single story about it on the top of Fox News (like the dozen or so stories visible when you go to the front page without scrolling). It was mostly about the Seattle thing and something from their "greatest hits" like slamming James Comey or whatever.

Today, the top story is about how Trump is trying to defend churches from COVID closings. But there's nothing about how cases are spiraling out of control or how Texas had to roll back their opening. But they did have a couple of stories portraying African Americans in a bad light - one about $14T in repartitions being crazy and one about how one of the protesters in Wisconsin has bad social media posts. You know - front page news type stuff.

SI

My question here is, prior to Covid, was there any other reason that trump should or could be argued to support getting trump out of office?

Appeals Court denies Trump Administration from using military funding on his wall:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/don...awful-n1232287

According to my dad no and most of the accusations against him were designed to hamstring his presidency regardless of being successful in removing him from office or not.

My brother who is a single issue voter is not going to vote for a democrat because they are going to take our guns. That said he hates Trump and wishes there was an alternative.

Depending on the state, would it matter to him if he voted Libertarian? Because that's an alternative, esp in a non-battleground state.

Hasn't the Supremes let him take money from wherever he wants already?

Brother, is that you brother? It's been so long...

Not exactly. I believe in the previous case the SCOTUS ruled that the Sierra Club did not have standing to see the Administration.

JFC and now Trump wants to invite Putin to the G7?

EXCLUSIVE: A Russian spy unit secretly offered bounties to militants in Afghanistan for killing American troops, U.S. intelligence officials found. Trump and White House have known for months, but not authorized any response.
w/ @EricSchmittNYT @mschwirtzhttps://t.co/o5NKTRDE8h

— Charlie Savage (@charlie_savage) June 26, 2020

I'm pretty sure my dad and step mom agree with your dad. They feel like everything is always completely overblown and that nothing is really like they hear it is. Then again, they do get all their info from foox and some of their more politically extreme sr citizen friends in whooopin ft worth tx.

he's also not going to come out and publicly speak out against Putin getting a do over on his political term, so now he can legally serve until 2036. In the past, a US president would have gone to somewhere like Poland and denounced that sort of autocratic leadership and pronounce democracy as the way of the future. Now? Good luck.

That, in any other presidency, would be one of the biggest scandals ever. Now? It is just your average Friday.

Imagine caring that much about guns.

Trump is either running national commercials on HGTV or New York commercials. Either way, I'm confused.

Well, I can understand their reticence, particularly after seeing how the government was treating protesters over the past month. They were out there protesting, right?

SI

I don't get it. When he was in college and I was in middle school, my parents and my brother thought I was crazy because I argued just because you did not need a gun did not mean you didn't have the right to own a gun because of the 2nd amendment.

30 years later, my brother is mostly a one issue voter and I am the only one that does not own a gun.

With regards to voting libertarian, not sure if my brother is going to go that route or not. I was accused of throwing my vote away in the 2008 and 2012 elections by both my father and brother because I voted libertarian in both elections. Of course, I lived in TN at the time and in both cases the state was leaning hard Republican.

We're losing suburban housewives. We have to hit HGTV hard!

New York I've no idea. Ego, maybe.

Even Trump's favorite job approval poll Rasmussen has him and 9% to the bad. I don't think I have ever seen this poll hit double digits before.

It is impossible to prove a hypothetical. But this morning I woke up wondering Whether the president would be a favorite for reelection at this point if he simply didn’t think that wearing a mask made him look silly.

If, from the beginning, he came out hard charging with the idea that masks were the way to reopen the economy. Then a lot more people would be wearing masks. And the virus would be much more under control. And at this point he would be getting credit for a V-shaped recovery.

I was brainstorming what Trump could do to change his poll numbers, but everything I came up with I rejected because it requires him to be someone he isn't. I think his only chance is voter suppression and dirty tricks.

Barr could cook up some charges against the Bidens or Trump could hold up a vial of water and claim it's the vaccine.

Based on his comments the past couple of weeks he seems to be coming to the realization that there is no silent majority that loves him and he really is hated by the majority of America. There has be a non-zero chance he sees defeat inevitable at some point and just quits.

I think that will be the one last thing he tries-announce a vaccine and take all the credit for it. I think that's what he was doing with the drug he was suggesting people take (and now the federal govt and Florida probably have a lifetime supply of). He desperately wants to be seen as the hero here and its pathetic the lengths he will go to for it. The sad thing is it could have worked if he had done what every other President would have done in this situation. He's playing golf today in Virginia so that should tell you how much he cares about what happens with America.

This isn't something Trump can really control, although he can take advantage of this sentiment which seems to be growing in popularity - or at least, making the rounds on social media...

If the far left continues to push beyond the obvious/more general consensus societal changes like taking down confederate statues and wants to expand that to things that many centrist/independents would oppose (like taking down Washington/Jefferson statues, destroying Mt. Rushmore, removing the term "master" from bedrooms, etc.), then I think he could swing people back under the fear that everything Republicans have said about Democrats is true. Biden needs to come out hard against some of the more fringy/ridiculous ideas.

Please tell me this is not a thing....

Dispute Arises Over the Term ‘Master Bedroom’ | Realtor Magazine

If they go after masturbation I am joining Team Trump all the way...

Holy shit, this is the exact overreach that turns moderates off. So many important things to focus on in regards to equality and racism. The fact that this is even on the list is such a disservice.

But even here he won't take full advantage of an opening. A different person could say yes to removing Confederate statues, but no to others, but Trump has already gone all-in on protecting Confederate monuments. That makes it much harder to sway suburban voters.

I just want to see Trump tweet how masturbation is a glorious and wonderful America institution and if Biden is elected the left will take your porn, lube and guns and how unchristian that is. He then goes on to pardon Ron Jeremy and threaten to send in troops if any statues of David and Venus de Milo are torn down.

Does that pretty much capture and invigorate his base?

True, but it's easy to lessen the impact of being in favor of protecting confederate statues when you can point to "the other side" wanting to do away with Mt. Rushmore or the National Anthem or other things that are pretty central to what most people would equate with being American.

I'm just saying... liberals, please do not F this up!

I dunno. You're always going to find someone somewhere who will say something. There's bound to be someone who wants to remove Mount Rushmore or rename master bedrooms (though, really, WTF really cares about that). Then the moment will pass and it won't happen. Because, really, when was the last time the Dems effectively did anything of consequence that was actually, you know, liberal? That's the biggest difference between the modern GOP and the modern Democrats - the GOP will actually listen to and act on those crazy voices on the fringe whereas the left listens, pats them on the head, says "we hear you", and then does something to the right of what Reagan would have done. All the while, Fox News paints a free market solution to health care or toothless bank regulations or centrist environmental regulations as the brain child of the love child of Marx, Lenin, Castro, and Chavez.

SI

There is a non-zero chance the liberals find a way to fuck this up between now and November.

I say that as a self-identified liberal (but really more of a centrist). Growing up, I remember the rant against Republicans was all about keeping them out of our bedrooms. With my own party, I feel like the legitimate rant is keeping them out of my living room (i.e., political correctness, the constant re-definition of inclusivity, thought-policing). Overreach is the Democratic Party's middle name. I despise my own party because they largely seem to be whiny and stupid and determined to tell everyone else how to live...which is only marginally better than the Republicans, who I despise because they're authoritarian, manipulative, and borderline evil in their policies and thought-processes.

I long ago came to the conclusion that for my life generally, my ideal form of democratic process is gridlock between the various branches. Give me a Republican president and a democratic congress (or vice versa) and a Supreme Court that's always 5-4ing everything but the most egregious shit, and I'm happy.

Oregon State, Oregon agree not to use the term ‘Civil War’ for sports rivalry games - oregonlive.com

The left is becoming a parody of itself.

It's not the left, it's the far left extreme and a parody would be funny, this is detrimental and detracts from progress towards equality. It's no different than the far right don't tread on me buffoons. does nothing but create more animosity.

Given the renewed scrutiny on Columbus, I'm expecting a semi-serious movement to reconfigure Thanksgiving into something else as we approach the end of October. Maybe too late to give the right ammunition for the election, but I will not be surprised in the least if this happens. No one will agree to losing a 4 day weekend, but some sort of end-of-fall celebration that replaces the traditional pilgrims-and-indians story

Does Columbus have anything to do with Thanksgiving?

There are going to be stupid 20 year-olds with social media accounts who want to cancel everything. Ignore them. They are young and foolish.

There are going to be stupid 60 year-olds with social media accounts who want to paint the Confederate flag on everything. Ignore them. They are old and foolish.

Slippery slope arguments don't make sense here. We should tear down the statues celebrating the leaders of a treasonous slave empire that spent its entire existence fighting the United States. That's the easy case. We can worry about the harder cases when the time comes.

Oh, and while we are doing that, we could also note that Russia gave bounties to Talaban soldiers that killed Americans. Which is a bigger story that what I call the main bedroom in my house.

Right now, the Trump administration is trying to decide whether it looks worse that he didn't know or that he did know. Right now, they are saying he didn't, but if that makes him look like a weak commander in chief, then they might switch to he did know.

There is a danger that this becomes a competition to be the most woke possible

Video from Jonathan Pie from a weeks or so ago makes the point with a bit of humour. Whole thing is worth watching, but the relevant section is from 0:56 onwards